


Picture Boxes

by mishcakes



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 19:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10951599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcakes/pseuds/mishcakes
Summary: Who would've thought Wash was this sentimental.





	Picture Boxes

Spring. What a wonderful time of the year. The weather is perfect, everything is green and all the flowers are blooming. No wonder it was Doc’s favourite time of the year. But, much like the changing of the seasons, the state of his house changed too. He had this date set aside for months to do a full house clean up. Dust, vacuum, mop, move things around, redecorate, and go through old stuff.

He woke up earlier than Wash for a change, giving his sleeping partner a kiss before he rolled out of the bed to begin his long day of cleaning. Wash had offered to help him but Doc refused. He knew Wash too well. Wash means well when he cleans but he misses so much and the man has the style of a toddler when it comes to redecorating, so Doc will have to go back and re-clean everything Wash “cleaned” and readjust all the furniture Wash had organised.

So instead, Doc asked Tucker to take Wash out for the day. Tucker seemed more than happy to oblige, which put Doc on edge. He then called Donut and asked him to go with Tucker and Wash, instead of coming over to help, to make sure that Tucker doesn’t do anything stupid with Wash, like try and take him bungee jumping again.

He made Wash breakfast and began to tidy the kitchen when Wash emerged. He noticed Wash spill a bit on the counter, and he knew that Wash saw it too, because they both saw it fall and they both looked at each other. Doc glared at him until he leaned over to grab a sponge and clean it up. Doc hummed happily when Wash cleaned it up and went back to pulling out the contents of their cabinets.

By the time 9am rolled around, Doc was about a quarter of the way through cleaning the kitchen. There was a knock on the door which meant that Donut was here to pick up Wash.

“I still don’t understand why you don’t want me here today,” Wash said as he went to let Donut in.

“Wash, honey, it’s because you’ll want to help me but you can’t clean for shit,” Doc replied from step stool he was standing on to empty their higher cabinets.

Doc couldn’t see Wash’s reaction, but he’s willing to bet that it was overdramatic.

Donut shouted him a greeting from the door and apologised for not being able to stay long, that he had a big day planned. Doc laughed when he heard Wash mutter an ‘oh no’.

“Bye Wash!” He called out after him, “Love you!”

With Wash gone, Doc can finally get down to business. He set up his music and entered a trance with one goal: clean. He was on his own this time. No Donut to help him. High gear was not high enough if he hoped to have everything done by the end of the day. Nevertheless, he stuck to his unrealistic goals and managed to clean and reorganise the kitchen by 10am, clean and bleach the bathroom by 11, tidy their study by 12:30, have lunch, go through all their old bills and paperwork by 2, and by the time he got to the living room, he was only half an hour out of his schedule. He had everything cleaned and vacuumed and was ready to rearrange the furniture, but his chief decorator was out with his husband. So he sent Donut a quick text;

**_Frankie:_ ** _Hey Donut, how should I put the furniture in the living room?_

**_Pastry:_** _Hmm_  
            Put the sofa near the window  
            aaaaaannnnndddddd  
            Put the tv on the east wall  
           Then put the armchair in the free corner  
           xoxo

**_Frankie:_ ** _Thanks! Xx_

**_Pastry:_ ** _Anytime!! Xoxo_

With that, Doc began his task of moving all the furniture by himself. Oh boy, was he going to be sore tomorrow.

He finally managed to get all the furniture right and swapped out their wall mounted picture of kittens in snow for a more season-appropriate picture of kittens in a field of flowers. He stood back and admired his work. He had a little over an hour and a half to go through their closets and wash the windows, so he opted to go through their closets first while Wash wasn’t there so Wash couldn’t stop him from donating his old clothes that he doesn’t wear and don’t fit anymore.

He began with the shoes, throwing away one pair that had the sole falling off. Then onto Wash’s shirts, then pants, then up to the shelf at the top of the closet with boxes of stuff. Doc grabbed his stool and began pulling down the boxes one by one. When he had them all down, he sat on the floor and began to go through them. The first one had all his old childhood stuff in it, from old drawings to old report cards. The next had Wash’s dumb collection of cat statues. Maybe one day Doc will let him display them. Maybe. There was a shoebox, however, that Doc didn’t recognise. He grabbed it and opened the lid. He was confused for a minute as to what was in it; a collection of random things that had no correlation. No correlation until Doc pulled out a movie stub and realised that it was from the first movie Wash and Doc saw together.

Doc kept digging. He pulled out a picture next, a picture Doc hadn’t seen in years. It was of him, Wash, Donut, Tucker, Simmons, Caboose, Grif, and Church all posing for a camera. The photo was taken years ago, before Wash and Doc were even remotely close to dating. It was the first time Wash had been invited on their annual trip. What an amazing trip that was. It was the first time that Wash had caught Doc’s eye. He remembered Wash trying to light a fire with damp wood. Doc was sitting to the side criticising and paying him out for not being able to make a simple fire. Wash got fed up and grabbed the jerry can full of spare petrol and doused the pile with it. _Stand back_ he growled and dropped a lit match on the wood. The fire whooshed to life and sent flames high into the air. Wash had given him the smuggest look and ever since then he couldn’t take his eyes of Wash. Doc can still feel the heat from that fire on his face.

Doc didn’t realise how hard he was smiling as he dug through the box, pulling out old love letters and old gifts until he stumbled upon a leaf that was in a ziplock bag with a faded date written on it. Doc racked his brain for where the leaf came from but he couldn’t place it. The date meant nothing to him either. He shook it off and kept digging. He found the bracelet Donut made for Wash when he found out that Doc and Wash were dating. _You’re one of the family now, Wash, so you get one too._ He found a key to their first apartment together and the picture Junior drew of them. He found the playlist from their wedding and the stupid token toy from the arcade they went to. He found heaps of things that Doc would never have kept but Wash did, from a blurry selfie they took together to a print out of their text conversation discussing which cats are better.

Doc had no idea Wash had this. Who knew Wash was this sentimental. He almost felt bad going through it. It was Wash’s box and there could have been things in there that Wash didn’t want Doc to see. He was too distracted by the memories in front of him to hear Wash come home and call his name. Footsteps at the bedroom door brought him out of his trance.

“Oh! Wash! Hi, you’re home-“ He checked his watch, “-right on time… I-I can explain. I was cleaning the closets and I wanted to dust these but I hadn’t seen this box before and I opened it and I shouldn’t’ve been nosy-“

“Doc, it’s okay,” Wash sat down next to Doc and put his arm around him, picking up one of the love letters that were laying on the floor. “I was saving this as a surprise, but I guess now’s a good as time as any. I was saving this for our 10th wedding anniversary. It’s a box full of all our firsts and all the things that we did and all the things that made me fall in love with you. If you dig deeper, down the bottom is the menu I stole from the restaurant from our engagement dinner and there’s a flower in there from the place I proposed to you. Everything’s in there. Everything that means something to me.”

“Wash, that’s so-“ Doc breathed out, overwhelmed, “This is the best thing ever.” He leaned over and gave Wash a kiss and leant into Wash’s embrace. “I just can’t believe you managed to hide this from me as well as you did.”

“Normally I’d take the box with me when you kick me out to clean but this time I didn’t have a chance to. Donut pulled me out the door. I knew you would’ve found it this time and I’m okay with that.” Wash tipped out the box and they began putting things back into it, going through and laughing at old memories.

Everything was put back in the box and Wash was about to put it back when Doc noticed the leaf still on the floor

“Hey Wash?”

“Hmm?” Wash hummed, standing up to put the box back.

“What’s this leaf from?”

Wash looked at the leaf, then back at Doc and sat back down. “That leaf was from the day I realised that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“But that date was so long ago. We’d barely been dating.”

“I know it was but I was set on you. Do you know what we did on that day?”

Doc shook his head. “What did we do?”

“Your car broke down again and we had to walk a mile in the cold and wind to get to Tucker’s house. That walk was when I fell in love with you. I saw the real you. I saw Frank, not just Doc, the Doc that I saw around Donut or Tucker. When you looked up at me I saw the universe in your eyes.”

“Wash…” Tears pricked at his eyes and Doc couldn’t finish his thought, so he kissed Wash again and held him tight. Love coursed through his veins.

Spring. What a wonderful time of the year.


End file.
